Nav Social Menu

Kim Nelson

This post is the continuation of our great WA road trip, if you missed Days 1-4 and Days 5-8 catch up here and here. Day 9 saw us headed to North Cascades National Park, staying in Mazama. Following is our North Cascades National Park road trip itinerary….

The adventure continues in our great WA road trip with days 5-8, if you missed Days 1-4 catch up here. Day 5 saw us headed to Olympic National Park with a stay in La Push and later in Port Angeles. Olympic National Park is large and spread out, with many different areas to explore, so we felt it best to split our stay in this park into two different locations….

When we head out on a road trip, I inevitably overpack (especially with food!). Driving isn’t like flying, I don’t have to be as choosy about what I bring, which is both good and bad… I have gotten better over the years about figuring out what we actually end up using on our trip and what stuff I don’t necessarily need to bring along. Here I have compiled a list of top 10 road trip packing tips for families in hopes that my road trip packing experience will help someone else. These are things I consider essentials when traveling with kids on a road trip….

Family podcasts are something we hadn’t explored much before this last road trip we made to Washington. I thought it may be a good way to mix things up between audiobooks and music so I researched some options before we left. The following are the ones we ended up enjoying….

Long road trips require lots of activities that will help pass time. We don’t want our kids watching movies the whole time so we have tried many different audiobooks over the course of the last few years. We’ve found that with audiobooks, the voice of the narrator makes a huge difference in whether or not we really enjoy listening. It could be an awesome book, but if the narrator has a boring or irritating voice, forget about it, my kids (and us parents) will lose interest. Following are some of the best audiobooks for family road trips….

Our family recently visited Mount Rainier National Park and it is gorgeous, though I still think Glacier NP is my favorite. We did some longer hikes, but there are many shorter, kid-friendly hikes as well for those who are not up for a longer hike. Here’s a list of the shorter hikes we did, some are not really a “hike.”…

Summer is officially here at the Nelson house, the kids finished up school last week and are now onto 2nd and 4th grade. WOW! I can’t believe that. Anyhow, summer inevitably means boredom at some point for my kids, which is fine, but when they get bored they tend to pick on each other more. …

Hiking with kids can be a challenge, but it’s so great to experience all the sights through your kid’s eyes. It makes those amazing views at the end of the trail that much more fun and beautiful when you’re enjoying it with your entire family. If you’re planning to hike with your kids (or with adults for that matter), the most important thing to remember is to be prepared for anything. On one of our family hikes in Arizona, “JoyJoy” slipped on a rock while crossing a stream and skinned her knee. Luckily Ross was prepared with a small first aid kit and got her patched up quickly. Other than the obvious things like water and snacks, our family has compiled a top 10 list, in no particular order, of some of our favorite and/or essential hiking gear items below….

We love muffins and peanut butter in this house and I love bringing muffins on our road trips for quick breakfasts or easy snacks, but the regular size muffins get squished so easily and end up a crumbly mess. These flourless peanut butter chocolate chip mini muffins from Averie over at averiecooks.com are awesome and they travel much better than a bigger muffin. An added bonus, they’re gluten free! Super moist and pop-able, nothing goes better together than peanut butter and chocolate, or peanut butter and banana for that matter. These little guys come together pretty quickly as they are mixed in a blender or food processor. When taking them on trips I make them ahead of time and freeze them until the day we leave. They then get stored at the top of our cooler (if there’s room in the cooler) or at the top of our “food bag.”…

Any other yogurt and granola lovers out there? When our family did a modified Whole 30 (really more of an elimination diet) with our kids back in February of this year, the thing my husband and I missed the most was our morning yogurt with granola. We both eat that for breakfast EVERY morning. Since finishing the modified Whole 30, our eating habits have changed a bit, amongst other changes we have switched to plain yogurt (I couldn’t give up yogurt, or dairy for that matter, completely!) and have drastically reduced our gluten intake. Thus my search began for a yummy gluten free, grain free granola with no refined sugar that still created those amazing, crunchy clusters. This recipe from Julia over at The Roasted Root is the best one we’ve tried so far. I will be making a big batch of this to take on our road trip to Washington this summer….

Primary Sidebar

About Us

Hi everyone! In 2015 our family set a goal to visit as many National Park sites as we could in the Contiguous US before the kids graduate from high school. This blog is our way of sharing what we do and helping others learn from our plans (with some fun extras thrown in as well)! Join our family as we passionately pursue adventuring beyond through travel, food, and more. Read More…

Subscribe to Adventuring Beyond via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to Adventuring Beyond and receive notifications of new posts by email.